The use of test strips in the determination of biological analyte concentration is of widespread importance, particularly to persons afflicted with type one diabetes. In regulating their disease, such diabetic patients may be required to perform an average of five to ten blood glucose tests per day via a process of self-monitoring to determine their blood glucose level. As a result, diabetic patients expend a significant amount of time throughout their daily lives testing their blood glucose levels.
As the number of patients suffering from diabetes increases, the practice of self-monitoring blood glucose levels has become routine. The process of self-monitoring typically involves diabetic patients obtaining a test strip, applying a sample of blood thereto, and obtaining results. Because the first step in the testing process is obtaining a test strip, the ability of diabetic person to easily obtain a test strip is of paramount importance.
Many difficulties associated with attaining a single test strip have been addressed at length in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,172,728 mentions that the difficulties surrounding test strip retrieval stem from both the design of test strip storage containers and the physical capabilities of diabetic individuals. The configuration of many test strip containers is problematic in that they are commonly designed to store a plurality of test strips while protecting the test strips from contaminants. As a result, test strip containers commonly take the form of conventional vials.
In a conventional vial, test strips recess below the vial opening and must be manually removed. This configuration intuitively leads test strip users to dump the vial or turn the vial upside down to retrieve a single test strip. This process causes the test strips to spill onto the work surface or floor, and may result not only in contamination of the test strips but also in an extension of the period of time required for testing through the pick-up process. An alternative option to dumping the vial to attain a single test strip would be for test strip users to insert a finger into the vial to grasp a strip. This option is also imperfect in that this contact may result in either damage or contamination to the test strips remaining in the vial, leading to inaccurate blood glucose level results.
Another hindrance common to diabetic patients is limited physical dexterity. Persons with diabetes typically suffer from diminished hand-eye coordination, diminished finger sensation, or a combination of the two. As a result, the ability of persons afflicted with diabetes to pick up a single test strip from a plurality of test strips is limited. This problem is further enhanced by the fact that test strips are commonly only several millimeters in width and in length.
Some test strip containers have been designed to ease test strip users in the process of selecting a single test strip from amongst a plurality of test strips, see for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,378,630, U.S. Pub. Nos. 2007/0264166 A1, 2007/0196240 A1, and 2003/0185708 A1. However these containers also carry with them a variety of disadvantages. Generally, the designs of the containers are more complex and not user friendly, diminishing the ease with which diabetic patients may operate the test strip containers.